作者：Alfred MacDonald

引言

在我大三的时候，身边围绕许多女性。我的课程——心理学、戏剧和英语，主要是女同学。尤其是戏剧，近70-80%都是女性。若你反应够快，你会发现许多游戏的男女比例恰好相反。

这并不是什么重要信息。但自6年级以来，我所参加的社交活动都是男士聚会。我已习惯以男性规则行事，从某种程度看，现在依然如此。但我意识到不同性别间的这种差异后，它们就在我脑中挥之不去。

全体和局部

女性相较男性更少关注整体。想想为什么有如此多男性上网同社区陌生人聊天：通常他们会关注他人如何评论自己。男性重视基于数量的成就，如IQ，因为这能够让他们同全社会做比较。女性通常较少关注这些；她们只关注所获成就在自己社交圈的比较情况。

想想你认识的男性中，有多少人会这么说：“我很聪明，但成绩不好”或类似言论。想想你认识的女性中有多少会这么说。通常女性会觉得这些分数很重要是由于其属于局部信息。这些分数处于自身边社交圈中，因此她们觉得这些信息存在更多内在价值。男性更倾向以这样的借口解释其糟糕成绩：“这不代表我的实际智商”，其蕴含意思是他们依然比整个社会优秀。

harvest moon from dsmedia.ign.com

男女权衡重要性的差异也充分体现在游戏中。坦白讲，女性体验游戏的方式与男性大不相同。她们不只是不像男性那么求胜心切，这点虽然属实，但并没有切中要点。女性偏好截然不同的游戏风格。我认识的所有女性都玩游戏，但不是我玩的类型。我的女性友人经常玩《模拟人生》和《牧场物语》，但全然不考虑《魔兽争霸III》。

重要性定位

我发现：游戏在定位意义方面存在特定风格。

近来女性在学术方面比男性更具优势，因为除学术瞄准社交圈（游戏邦注：而非普遍社会）外，教学单位也倾向同时布置多项任务，而不是整个学期陆续举行3次大型测试。这要求学生跟进进度，安排任务顺序。

现在，将此运用至游戏。哪些游戏要求你“关注跟进进度，安排任务顺序”？

—《牧场物语》

—《模拟人生》

—《动物之森》

—《口袋妖怪》（程度更小）

所有这些游戏都在女性群体中颇受欢迎。

个性玩法

这不足以体现男女游戏之间的差异，因为这里至少有3款存在一个共性：个性化。

当男性体验游戏时，他们通常希望战胜某些内容，或表现更杰出。而女性则更倾向反复发展某内容以及同某元素互动。探索未知领域或战胜某人的内容通常无法吸引女性群体；但这正好迎合男性群体的口味，因为这是多数RPG游戏的前提。

看看上述最后一款游戏：《口袋妖怪》。你也许会发现很多男男女女都玩《口袋妖怪》。但你有没有花时间观察他们的体验方式？

女性体验《口袋妖怪》的方式与玩《模拟人生》类似。她们创造某角色，然后角色随时间流逝逐步发展。她们把《口袋妖怪》看作“宠物小精灵”，而不是获得胜利的途径。当男性玩《口袋妖怪》时，他们通常会去除其精灵的个性元素。虽然有些男性有自己最喜爱的宠物，但通常他们只是考虑哪个精灵能够帮助他们获胜。

要陈述这点，先让我提个问题：你看见多少女性玩《口袋妖怪》？多少女性在serebii.net寻找理想团队成员？后者需玩家怀有获胜心理，希望表现得比其他女性玩家杰出，这是女性群体所缺乏的，因为女性玩家的社交圈通常不会在《口袋妖怪》中关注这些方面。

扩展型和维护型

扩展型和维护型游戏的定义(from gamasutra)

扩展型游戏鼓励玩家通过外在形式突显自身存在。它们鼓励玩家探索、征服、控制或争取某些优越性。

维护型游戏鼓励玩家保持既有状态。它们鼓励玩家维持其所控制元素的秩序。这些内容存在吸引力是由于它们为玩家所有，而不是比其他元素更优或更糟。

《口袋妖怪》和MMORPG游戏处在各自类型的边缘地带，因为它们能够以更男性或女性的方式体验（游戏邦注：这取决于玩家的选择）。但其机制和刺激系统稳固扎根于各自类型中。

Brenda Laurel曾于1998年发表TED演讲，其呈现的数据恰好契合我所陈述的差异性。她归类为“女性游戏”的内容不仅属于维护型游戏，还极致呈现我所陈述的女性游戏特性。

意义和总结

这对游戏行业来说具有广泛意义。虽然我不愿意承认这点，但很多游戏都会部分参考评论者的意见。因此评论者会基于游戏“趣味性”评价游戏。此“趣味”概念极大取决于男性所设定的标准。这不是什么阴谋诡计；相反若男性喜欢的内容与女性不同，就会出现由男性主导行业评价喜好的局面。

同样，很多男性会不知不觉向其他男性宣传他们所玩的游戏。这本身没有问题，但若游戏设计师希望覆盖女性群体，而且不解为何其无法做到，这就会产生问题。男女用户通常偏好不同玩法风格。女性偏好基于维护型的玩法风格，而男性则偏好基于扩展型的玩法机制。通过发现这些区别，设计师能够覆盖其原本忽略的用户群体。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Expansion Games and Maintenance Games

by Alfred MacDonald

Introduction

In my junior year of college I was around more women than I had possibly been at any other point in my life. At least four times weekly I would crash at a suite with four girls, and my classes — psychology, theater, English — were overwhelmingly female. Theater in particular was something like 70-80% female. If you’re quick, you’d notice that this is the male-female ratio of many games reversed.

This in itself is not significant. However, every social environment I participated in since the sixth grade was a sausagefest. I became extremely used to operating within male codes, and to a lesser degree this is still true. When I noticed what seemed like irreconcilable differences between the genders, these differences stuck out to me — severely so.

The Universal and The Local

Women simply cared less about universality than men. Think about why there are so many men on the (public) internet, talking to large forums of people they don’t know: on average, they care about what people everywhere have to say about them. Men value number-based accomplishments like IQ because it compares them to society at large. Women, in general, care far less about this; they care about their accomplishments relative to their social circles.

Think about how many men you know who are likely to fall into the trap of saying “I’m smart, but I get bad grades” or some variant of this. Now, compare that figure to the number of women you know likely to say that. It’s far more likely that for the women you know, those grades matter because they are local. They are within social spheres close to them and as such, they think grades have more intrinsic value. Men are far more likely to rationalize their bad grades with “this isn’t representative of my actual intelligence,” the implication of course being that they’re still better than society at large.

These differences in assigning significance tranferred substantially to games. Bluntly, women played games differently than men. It’s not enough to say they weren’t competitive like men, because while that’s true it doesn’t cut to the essence of the point. Women simply preferred a different gaming style than men. All of the women I knew played games, but they were never the same type of game I played. Here I could see women I knew playing The Sims and Harvest Moon on a regular basis, but WarCraft III was simply beyond the question.

Importance Allocation

Then I noticed: the games overlapped with their style of significance assignment.

Women have had an edge over men in academics lately because in addition to academics being focused on social spheres and not universals, departments have been trending toward many small duties all at once, opposed to three gigantic tests at several points in the semester. It requires the student to keep track and maintain order among their duties.

Now, apply this to games. What games require you to “keep track of your duties and maintain their order”?

- Harvest Moon

- The Sims

- Animal Crossing

- (to a lesser extent) Pokemon

All of these games are popular with women.

Personal Gameplay

Yet this list doesn’t capture the differences in male and female games adequately enough, because there’s one common trait to at least three games here: personalization.

When men play a game, they usually think about beating things. Or being better than things. Women are far more likely to develop and interact with one thing over and over. The idea of venturing out into an unknown territory and beating the crap out of everything in it doesn’t appeal to the average female; it does apply to the average male and very much so, because it’s the premise of most RPGs.

Look at that last one on the list: Pokemon. Chances are, you’ve known a lot of girls and boys alike who play Pokemon. But have you ever taken much time to observe how they play Pokemon?

When a woman plays Pokemon, most of the time it is similar to how a woman plays The Sims. She creates a unit and that unit develops over time. They value the Pokemon as Pokemon, and less often as a means of winning. When a man plays Pokemon, they are more likely to depersonalize their Pokemon if anything. While some men have their favorite Pokemon, they’re more likely to think about what Pokemon help them win.

To illustrate this point, let me ask you: how many women do you see playing Pokemon? Now, how many women do you see looking up ideal team comps on serebii.net? The latter requires a devotion to winning and being better than others that women don’t have because it’s unlikely that a woman’s social sphere is going to care much about Pokemon.

Expansion and Maintenance defined

Expansion games incentivize the player to expand their presence outward. They encourage the player to explore, to (often) conquer or dominate, and to strive toward some sort of superiority over everything around them.

Maintenance games incentivize the player to maintain their existing presence. They encourage the player to keep order within the things they’re already in charge of. There’s an attraction to those things because they’re your own, not because they’re better or worse than anything else.

Pokemon and MMORPGs are the gray areas of their respective categories, in that they can be played in a more male or female way depending on the player. Their mechanics and incentive systems, though, are firmly entrenched in their category.

Brenda Laurel has done a TED Talk in 1998 with data cementing these distinctions I have made here. The game she mentions as an example of a “game for girls” is not only a maintenance game, it’s every female game trait I have talked about here blown up to an extreme.

Significance and conclusion

This has wide-reaching implications for the gaming industry. While we don’t like to admit it, many games are made at least in part with reviewers in mind. Reviewers, accordingly, rate games based on how ‘fun’ they are. This idea of ‘fun’, as you can expect, is heavily determined by standards males have set for fun. This isn’t some conspiratorial thing; rather, if men like different things than women, it follows that an industry of mostly men would evaluate their preferences accordingly.

As such, many men are unknowingly incentivizing their games for other men. This in itself isn’t a problem, but it is a problem if a game designer wants to reach women and wonders why he/she cannot. Women and men, on average, like different gameplay styles. Women prefer a more maintenance-oriented gameplay style, while men prefer a more expansion-oriented gameplay style. By becoming aware of these differences, designers can reach audiences they were previously in the dark about.（Source：gamasutra）